Hi,
I am trying to copy files stored in the clearcase, using a shell script.
In order to do this i need to logon as a user other than root and set the view with cleartool command:
su - <user> -c "cleartool setview <viewname>"

The problem is that now i need to access the files within this view, however the setview command opens a new shell and i can't seem to execute any commands within this shell. I've tried a number of options but no luck. Any attempt to access the files in the view results in an error saying that the files do not exist (meaning that the view was set and the shell opened by that command has closed by the time i was trying to access the files in the view, and back in the current shell those files are really non accessible, since there's no view set).

I'd really appreciate any suggestions,

plin.

Can you first su to the user and then enter individual cleartool commands:
su - <user>
cleartool <subcommand>
cleartool <subcommand2>
cleartool <subcommand3>
...

You can do this, but you have to do things a little bit differently. It has been a couple of years since I have used clearcase, but I remember having to deal with this. I think cleartool has a startview command (or something like that) that starts the view. This command does not start a new shell. To actually see the files in the view, you actually look in a different filesystem. On our systems there would be a directory like /views/<view name>/ that would let you see the files in the view. I don't know if that is a typical location or something specials our admins had configured. Hopefully, this is enough to get you on the right path.

thanks the startview thing worked just fine